The 1960's
by sondering
Summary: The 1960's is one of the most important historical time period in America. With segregation, racial tension, and the Civil Rights Movement, how will best friends Jacin and Winter find love and friendship in dangerous times and hardships during the 1960's? Featuring all tlc characters/couples.
1. Chapter 1

My name is Winter Hayle-Blackburn. Or you could just say Winter Hayle.

I'm black in the 1950's-1960's, and it's such a crime.

I'm a young black woman in the 1950's-1960's, and that has to be the runner up for the biggest crime in American society as of right now. First being black males. I should know, I witnessed my own dad murdered right in front of my very own widened eyes.

I endured white girls yanking my coily hair, confused why the texture didn't match their own.

I endured white boys criticizing that very same hair and skin, calling me a nigger.

I endured evil stares walking down the streets, the sidewalks, that white school.

I endured the press watching my every move ever since I was nine. Ever since my papa died.

I endured the three tear drop scars on my cheek by Ms. Levana in the alley of her infamous restaurant, "The Blackburns."

I endured the downfalls, failures, and setbacks of the Civil Rights Movement.

Most of all, I endured the worst of it all...

Falling in love with my best friend, Jacin, who was of a different race.

A superior race.

A vengeful race.

A powerful race.

But I wasn't in love with his race.

I was in love with _him_.

And he was in love with me.

 _Me_.

The girl of an inferior race.

A weak race.

A disgrace of a race.

A powerless race.

But there is no race in love. It's only love.

Love has no color. But in this time period, only the same color could marry off and fall in love.

Friendship has no color, but it was preferred to have friends of the same color.

I have no color, my skin is only darker.

Yet somehow, that makes me a nigger and inferior.

* * *

 **This idea has been on my mind for quite some time now. Not only a story that focuses solely on Jacin and Winter, but a story set upon the Civil Rights Movement time period. I'm black myself, so I cherish this story and want to focus on this only, not updating two stories back to back because if you haven't noticed, The Rampion Boyz is strictly fun and romance, while this type of story is more historical and serious. Of course, this will remain a one-shot until I'm finished or almost close to finishing The Rampion Boyz Chronicles, but I just wanted to put this prologue out here to get some feedback from any one who may read this. Please review if you think I should continue and if this prologue was decent, and I'l be updating on the Rampion Boyz sometime this week if not tonight. Follow and favorite this story if you like this prologue also, peace out!**


	2. Chapter 2

_i. "My child, hold on to that innocence of yours while you're still a little girl. Because you're going to need it when the world teaches you not to have it."_

* * *

Journal entry 1

August, 1955

"Winter honey, it's time to wake up."

I could feel Papa gently nudging me in his half-sized, worn down bed. Often times, I'd sleep with him in the middle of the night when I had a nightmare about something. Or when I just wanted to be comforted that _daddy_ was going to make me feel okay, _daddy_ would make me feel safe. That with Papa, there would be no nightmares. Because he's here.

I already knew the procedure, not wanting to disappoint Papa by getting him off schedule because his annoying little daughter decided not to wake up today. I swiftly sat up on the mattress, rubbing my itching eyes before squinting them open. On the far left corner of Papa, I could feel the sun's gleaming gaze right through our wretched curtains.

Our small, shabby house was not the best, but it would do. It would _have_ to do, as Papa put it. But no worries, he would always say. "One day, after all this debt is paid off and the weight of this nation is lifted off my shoulders, I'll make sure we get to live in those middle class houses just for you, Winter." He promised. "If not those fancy, uptown ones." He would creep up a wry smile while hoisting me up on his shoulders, and I would giggle.

I immediately got out of bed, going into our bathroom and making sure to brush my teeth, wash my face, and wash up. I decided to put on one of my floral dresses that my late mother had made just for someone of my size. My mother was a seamstress, that is, before she died of childbirth. Before she died because of me. But I didn't have any hard feelings towards it, father said it was such a stupid thing to blame yourself on what was supposed to happen for a reason, for a greater purpose. I like that saying.

"Are ya ready baby?" Papa said, setting down his granola bar before giving me my bowl of oatmeal.

"Yes, Papa," I said softly before quickly gulping down my oatmeal. I could tell we were already on a tight schedule because of how urgent and tense Papa looked. He tried disguising the way his forehead would crinkle up in concern and concentration on his rich dark skin, the way his body would instantly freeze up, the way he checked his beat down watch given to him by his grandpa so frequently. These things he did not want me to know, but it was the little things that could potentially lead to a big problem that I unfortunately noticed.

"I'm done Papa." I hopped off the chair by our small table for two, picking up a water bottle from the fridge.

"Alrighty then, sweetheart. Off to work we'll go." I took his hand, and we headed outside to the blazing Alabama heat.

* * *

Looking outside the window pane from the backseat, I specifically remembered the very first time I was going to Papa's job. Or, at least, the very first time I remembered we were going to his job. I've been going there since I was born, Papa told me, it was only when I turned two that I could sputter out sentences efficiently.

It was my first time going to his job. Except, I never knew his job looked like _this **.**_ Like royalty. At least, to a kid it did. And it still does, compared to the black side of Shakespeare. Papa worked on the white side. With the nice, well built houses. The picket fences. The ever so green grass. The well-fashioned snobby white folks and their snobby children. I remembered how well cared they kept their neighborhood, while ours was consistently unkept.

 _I had said, "Papa?"_

 _"Yes, Winter?" he cooed from the drivers seat._

 _"Why do their houses look like that? Wah-why can't we have a house like that?" I asked once he pulled up to the Blackburn's residence._

 _I could hear my Papa sigh, not wanting to have this conversation this early in my life, let alone this early in the morning. "Because that's the way things are around here Winter." I could see the backside of his head shaking. "We get the shorter end of the stick."_

 _I didn't know what that meant, other than that's just the way things were. From then on out, I associated nice and rich with whites, and poor & not-so-nice with blacks. _

_Instead, I just kept a smile on my face for my Papa. "Okay, Papa."_

 _Papa never liked talking about it, but it was bittersweet and an important part in my life for me to remember it. It was when I had an unknowingly brainwashed knowledge of the division between blacks and whites here down south._

If only little Winter knew it gets worse.

* * *

As usual, I was ecstatic to see my playmate, Selene.

Although we were both innocently ignorant to the sneers thrown at us from the Blackburn family, they were all too busy doing what they had to do everyday instead of scolding their daughter, their granddaughter, or their niece not to play with negros. Or worse, niggers.

Dad did all their dirty work like a maid, except they already had a housemaid, as old fashioned as it was. She was of a lighter skin tone than both me and my dad. Dad was too busy mowing their lawn, and the highest the Blackburns would pay him a week or even a month would be five to ten bucks.

Still not enough.

But if it wasn't for the Clay's next door, in whom we'd often visit every time we were around this neighborhood and outside of their neighborhood, although my dad didn't like to accept it, especially in front of me, Mr. Garrison Clay would always lend him some money willingly. Even though my father's skin tone couldn't easily prevail the redness that might've crept up in his cheeks, I knew he was embarrassed by his body language he'd always have when given money by his best friend of a different class and race. A superior race and an upperclass. He felt small, his pride withering each day, and he tried keeping it up for me.

For _me_. No matter how little I could understand the nice exchange. A man's pride would always decrease regardless of the difference in age, and especially in the presence of a higher social status. If the man couldn't provide for himself and not even have to ask someone for a necessity because that other man could see how badly he was struggling to get by, it would always be torture for him.

I felt sorry for my Papa, I really did. He didn't have a family. I didn't know much about his parents other than the fact that they were dead. He had no siblings. He had no _immediate_ family. His wife died at childbirth because of _me_ , the only family he's got now. The one he has to look over, protect, carry another weight of responsibilities of and have the strength to keep living for. And although I was too young to understand everything, I sensed some things. I saw the signs. I saw it whenever I played with Selene at the Blackburns from the morning until night, when we'd have to go home and I'd smell the outside on him. When I'd see the sweat beating off his face, his dark skin gleaming with red undertones from being out in the heat all day, and the look on his face when his hard work and labor could never meet with the money he was paid to get by with. The look on his face when we were at the Clay's, the only place that made him really smile when in the presence of his non-peers. It would be one of a tired smile most of the time, but I would be too caught up with Jacin, my best friend, and all our other childhood antics. Sometimes the Blackburn's, specifically their youngest daughter Levana would send Selene over. But Jacin was the one I knew first. Jacin was there from the beginning, when Selene and her mother, Channary left town temporarily because they she wanted to start a "new life," especially after her mistake of having Selene with a Chinese man. Although she was the oldest child and the favorite to Jannali and Marrok, they would never forgive her of such a thing, and often disputed at what a disgrace Selene was to their family. Poor Selene, who had already bared no similar resemblance or features to the Blackburn's, nor was her skin matched up to par as theirs: milky and fair. Selene already had tanned skin at one. At the time, being born out of wedlock and to parents who were still in school themselves, the Blackburn's picture perfect reputation around town would be tarnished if they did not cover it up with the lie that Selene was only adopted. After all, Mr. Blackburn was a prominent lawyer while Mrs. Blackburn and their daughters owned a booming restaurant around town called "The Blackburns."

If only they knew that their life would be more tarnished and covered up with lies and contracts and _secrets_.

Given that Mr. Clay and my Papa were so close, Jacin and I became so close.

 _Too_ close.

We all had to be very secretive in the sense of a well-off family inviting negroes in their house so frequently. Papa had to do some form of work to make it seem like we didn't go over there for fun, for the mere fact that we were friends with who were supposed to be our opponents and complete opposites. Though, no matter how hard the scolding would get in the presence of others, Jacin and I would be oblivious to the world around us, to our skin tones, that we treated, talked, and touched each other like we were of the same skin tone behind doors _and_ outdoors. Papa and the Clay's would often sit us down, and it would be during one of those sit-downs where I could sense the seriousness of it all, how vital it was that we were to pretend like we weren't each others best friends. That we were _enemies_. It almost seemed like it was too much to ask for toddlers. Once again, I didn't understand and would became very confused by the motive at the time, when the Clay's would treat us like their white neighbors before they'd turn cold in front of those very same neighbors we were treated as behind closed doors. But I soon learned that it would be for our own good. The Clay's were and would always be very nice, generous, and good people. In fact, good is such an understatement when it came to them.

* * *

Papa was sitting at our small table that was meant for a dining room, which just so happened to be a small beat up kitchen with the table in the center of it.

I already knew he had his glasses on because he was reading the newspaper that would always cover his face.

Normally, I'd take a small glance at the sight and look away, but it was the front cover that captivated my attention, and horrified me for the rest of my life. It would be a cover I'd always have nightmares on the days and months to come, along with some other horrible memories that a three year-old shouldn't have to see.

On the cover of _Jet_ _Magazine_ was of a so called black boy by the name of Emmett Till. It looked as if he was in a casket, and his face... that face.

I couldn't detect if it _was_ a face.

I screamed. I screamed to the top of my lungs.

My father immediately threw down the paper, already knowing what triggered me and automatically apologized in that soothing voice of his for me to have seen that. He reached out and coddled me in his big arms, and I could feel the concern in his unusual pair of golden-brown eyes with flecks of grey stare down at me. Rocking me.

"Papa," my voice wavered in fear.

"Yes, Winter?" he asked gently.

"What was that?" my voice kept cracking.

And cracking.

And cracking until I hysterically started crying at how gruesome his mutilated and deformed face was.

My father continued to console me, pressing kisses that I could not feel into my thick and untamed ebony hair.

"That is the face of a fourteen year-old boy, whose face was mutilated."

"Mutilated?" I whispered to myself.

"It means... to put serious damage on." Papa tried making the term seem easier to my smaller vocabulary.

But mutilated... mutilated would always stick to me. Especially that summer of August 1955.

When father tucked me to bed that night, then decided to join me under the covers after what I had just witnessed, he pulled me closer to him like I was his teddy bear.

As he could hear my sniffles at midnight due to my insomnia, I could've sworn I heard him say "My child, hold on to that innocence of yours while you're still a little girl. Because you're going to need it when the world teaches you not to have it."

* * *

 **THE VERY FIRST CHAPTER! I couldn't help but post it. Tell me how you all like it! Make sure to comment, follow, and favorite if you did enjoy it so far. As a little note, this is adult Winter acting as a narrator throughout her journal entries she wrote throughout the years.**

 **QOTD:**


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